the presence of Wind Driver, chief of the Golden Dogs, and his demure and
charming daughter, Wine Face, who looked upon him with the eye of
affection--a matter fully, but not ostentatiously, appreciated by
Lazenby. If he could have entirely forgotten a pretty girl in South
Kensington, who, at her parents' bidding, turned her shoulder on him, he
would have married Wine Face; and so he told Pierre. But the half-breed
had only a sardonic sympathy for such weakness. Things changed at once
when Shon McGann arrived. He should have come before, according to a
promise given Pierre, but there were reasons for the delay; and these
Shon elaborated in his finely picturesque style.

He said that he had lost his way after he left the Wapiti Woods, and
should never have found it again, had it not been for a strange being who
came upon him and took him to the camp of the White Hand Indians, and
cared for him there, and sent him safely on his way again to Fort Luke.

"Sorra wan did I ever see like him," said Shon, with a face that was
divil this minute and saint the next; pale in the cheek, and black in the
eye, and grizzled hair flowin' long at his neck and lyin' like snakes on
his shoulders; and whin his fingers closed on yours, bedad! they didn't
seem human at all, for they clamped you so cold and strong."

"'For they clamped you so cold and strong,'" replied Pierre, mockingly,
yet greatly interested, as one could see by the upward range of his eye
towards Shon. "Well, what more?"

"Well, squeeze the acid from y'r voice, Pierre; for there's things that
better become you: and listen to me, for I've news for all here at the
Fort, before I've done, which'll open y'r eyes with a jerk."